Going veggie?

So I think my husband and I are going to make the switch to vegetarianism...or at least pescovegetarianism, for now. Plant-based is always the diet we've preferred anyway, for health reasons. We started thinking about all the economic and environmental reasons to become vegetarian too, and now I think we've finally made a decision.

I've been reading a lot lately about how livestock consume enough grain to feed 800 million people--people who cannot get enough to eat. How many children starve to death each year around the world? The meat consumption that we sustain in the United States is quite a waste of both grain and fresh water. In fact, with per capita meat consumption in the U.S. reaching 260 pounds annually, the rate at which we eat meat is unsustainable from an environmental perspective. Not to mention the cruelty that goes into factory farming...

So why fish? Organically-raised fish, anyway, are not going to put much of a dent in the world's grain consumption, if at all. They won't have been treated cruelly. Plus, they're healthy and low in fat. I think fish are pretty safe. Anyway, that's our decision for now. Maybe we'll take it a step further once we adjust to this.

As it is, we probably only eat meat at an average of 3 meals a week. So we don't have that much farther to go to reach the vegetarian stage. There's actually a word for our current diet--flexitarianism. Isn't that a silly term? You can just tell it was made for people who were not ready to be vegetarians, but wanted to show the world that their diet was different from the average. Anyway, the word sounds silly to me. But... Veggies are great! I prefer a plate of turnip greens, broccoli, and asparagus any day over a hunk of beef or pork or even chicken.

That's the deal. And I don't, by any means, think that having meat in your diet is wrong. I just think, for me and Bob, this was a personal conviction and a decision we had to make.